Quote:
Originally Posted by rhadin
Yes there are great opportunities now, but only if you rise above the crowd and I think that is becoming increasingly difficult as fewer self-published authors who want to rise simply just sit at their computer, put the words on screen, and press Publish to Internet.
This discussion has been had many times before but the one thing that has never been satisfactorily answered is: What mechanical steps does the successful self-published author take to help ensure that his/her product has the opportunity to be successful?
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Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And that's the problem. There are the hypersensitive artists who believe that their work is the most amazing thing to ever come into existence. They'll demand to be displayed in the louve, regardless of the fact that they can barely draw a stick figure. The same thing applies to writers. We have all sorts of leet kiddies out there who believe that they're God's gift to creativity. I've already seen a bunch of them on the self promotion threads. Language as a whole is becoming more and more, craptastic, for lack of a better word.
As the internet becomes more and more mainstream, and ppl who tipe lik dis n think iz ok 2 rite lik dis bc itz readable, people are going to probably end up less tuned to language as a whole. Literacy rates are down nationwide here, there's plenty of people who can't read at all or read anything higher than a third grade level.
Unfortunately, some can't even write at that high of a level.
What was the point of my rant? Oh yeah..
Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but sometimes you can't see it until you put your darn glasses on. It's your book, write it how you want. But don't. please, for the love of Pete, write your book during NaNo and then immediately stick it up on the Kindle store when you're done.
That. Would. Be. Bad.
You can tell this to people until you're blue in the face, but you probably won't make an impact. I think the future of digital publishing will rest in the hands of the guilds.
I think there's a couple of writer's guilds out there for indie/self pubbers right now. Some of them are united with indie artists who can do covers, and there may even be a couple of grammarwhores in there too that know their stuff.
But grammar isn't really the problem. I mean, look at Cormac McCarthy. He's done just fine telling everyone ion the ivory towers to shove off.
The problem is QUALITY. It could be a great book, but when Joe's name changes to Jim on page 43 and then he becomes Joshua on page 187 and back to Joe on page 253, there's a problem. Or if he's being chased by the Mohicans in Chapter 3, then finds out that there's a giant space alien ready to eat his face at the start of Chapter 4, actually that might be kinda cool.
Or if you introduce a capable secondary main protag in Chapter 6 only to have her disappear and leave a billion questions unanswered..There's a problem when you can drive a semi truck through all the plot holes, especially when a second pair of eyes or a respectable editor would have come in handy.
I wrote my NaNo in 30 days, like a billion other people. I thought it was great at the time, until I reread it six months later and noticed all the "stream of conscious speed bumps" that I left behind. These are things that were caught on the fifth read through by me and the first by a couple of trusted beta readers. I started banging my head against the desk every time I noticed a speed bump of tense shift, POV shift, or even switching to passive voice. Passive was my biggest ass kicker, "and then" alone gave me a concussion.
And then Lag Nebios vanished without a trace and I had to call Mulder and Scully to find her...
Seriously people, read your work. =)
/Rant.